Paris blog | Paris blog
Oct.26.2012
It was not the way I wanted to spend my last day in Paris.
On our first trip to France, in 2001, the lovely Art Boy and I had arrived with friends on June First, a Friday afternoon, and spent the rainy weekend visiting museums and discovering cafés. Our friends had bought an old stone millhouse on...
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Oct.26.2012
Monsieur de Méneval was not the type I’d expect to see on all fours: a small, graying Frenchman, crisp of carriage, with an astonishing aquiline nose. And this was not a place that promised such informality—a bourgeois salon with its large oil portrait of an austere ancestor, its ancient bandoliers...
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Oct.26.2012
Antwerp is my home town, so Paris is about good two hours away by train. I must admit that I have a troubled relationship with Paris. The romance of eating baguette with Camenbert for a week wears thin when there is no money for anything substantial. The good for me in Paris was a small café where...
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Oct.26.2012
I'll get in the spirit of things with Red Room's invitation to blog about Paris with a link to a piece I wrote a couple months ago about visiting Paris -- and letting my young children be the tour guides, which they ably did with the help of their favorite children's books set in the City of Light...
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Oct.26.2012
Paris, the city of love and lights; the place where authors like James Baldwin, along with other black artists, writers, and performers, found welcome and a home when they were rejected by their own country. I grew up with a romanticized image of Paris in my head, and an almost insane...
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Oct.26.2012
Ah, Paris, where everyone seems to be saying something wonderful, something sensuous and sexual, even when they aren’t. Ah, Paris, home of the Eiffel Tower, the Arche de Triumphe, a river with left and right banks (how wonderful is that!), and more cafes and bottles of wine than people.
Ah, Paris,...
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Oct.26.2012
My twelve-year-old daughter wants to go to France. She plucks at her shirt and signs that she wants to go shopping in Paris, fashion capital of the world. She gazes at me with her brown eyes, puts her hands together as if to pray, and says, “Iaaiii!” Ikittai! I want to go!
"How did you learn about...
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Oct.26.2012
Paris Blog (or, How a Terrorist Attack Taught Me that Journalism Wasn't for Me!)
In 1982, on graduating from journalism school, I was lucky enough to win a grant from the Correspondent’s Fund for an apprenticeship at a United Press International office overseas. My first choice was...
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Oct.25.2012
Two trips to Paris, ten years apart. Two different men, both named Peter. They even shared the same initials. Peter #2 unknowingly booked the same flight over. The similarities ended there.
Peter #1 was a rich rascal who took me to Paris for a first (and last) date. It was the best of times...
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Oct.25.2012
Winter 1997
Frozen dog shit everywhere in the snow...that's what I remember most about Paris. Except for the snow, it's no different than being in San Francisco walking my aunt's dog.
Stopping an elderly man for directions to the nearest post office to send off post cards to my niece...he stalked...
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